That moment at the association's annual dinner dance last month must have been especially sweet for Joe O'Donoghue, the association's leader: It was the tangible, undeniable demonstration of his power.

In a city where the fiercest political battles are over land use, O'Donoghue has become a dominant figure -- shaping not only the appearance of San Francisco but also operating as a behind-the-scenes power in the Department of Building Inspection and other agencies that deal with construction.

Facing the crowd of 1,000 builders, real estate agents, politicians and others at the $160-a-plate event that night, O'Donoghue reveled in the moment. "You are the Residential Builders Association," he said, his voice thundering. "You are bringing this city back to the splendor it once had!"

In recent years, O'Donoghue has used his bullying manner, penetrating sense of San Francisco politics and vitriolic attacks on foes to clear the way for waves of loft construction in the South of Market, Mission and Potrero districts. Reviled by critics as architectural abominations, the structures are the continuing focus of a political struggle, but the lofts still draw buyers willing to part with $300,000 to $1 million.

Along with lofts, O'Donoghue has reshaped the city's look on block after block by pushing everything from an eight-story office building on Geary Boulevard to the demolitions of single-family homes in the Richmond District.

For an immigrant who arrived from Ireland barely four decades ago, it is a legacy of enormous proportion -- making him an inspirational leader to his admirers, and to his detractors a demonic man crushing the city's character.

"Joe got through Building Inspection myriad changes in the building code in record time that allowed his people to produce maybe 4,000 live-work units," said Calvin Welch, a nonprofit-housing activist who has fought with O'Donoghue. "I lived through the entire highrise battle from the mid-'70s to mid-'80s, and none of those guys -- (Walter) Shorenstein, (Ben) Swig -- worked at wiring the entire system the way Joe has."

Since O'Donoghue took over the Residential Builders Association in 1986, he has transformed a ragtag group into a political force that has given tens of thousands of dollars to politicians including Brown, state Senate leader John Burton and Gov. Gray Davis.

At 62, the big-voiced man with white hair and gold-rimmed glasses is out daily advancing his belief that the city should build, build, build, and his members should prosper as they build.

"Jobs, jobs, jobs is our simple motto," O'Donoghue says.

O'Donoghue added greatly to his power in recent years by co-authoring a 1994 ballot measure, Proposition G, that he used to become an unappointed king in the Department of Building Inspection.

That agency, little noticed outside the construction world, wields power over all building done in the city, by determining whether structures meet electrical, plumbing and other code requirements. The department has been in the news recently with revelations about local and federal investigations into allegations of possible impropriety. O'Donoghue's name has not surfaced in any of these probes.

In the department's offices at 1660 Mission St., sources say, O'Donoghue has influenced key personnel moves -- enabling those who see matters his way to advance and sidetracking those who don't.

His reach doesn't end there: It extends to other government entities that affect building in San Francisco.

On the Board of Appeals sits Brown appointee John McInerney, a real estate executive and ex-Residential Builders Association board member who says, "I think the world of Joe. I think he has done a great job."

And just last month, Brown appointee Anita Theoharis, president of the Planning Commission, called O'Donoghue a "remarkable man" who has brought "facts, logic and common sense" to planning debates in San Francisco.

In advancing his pro-building cause, O'Donoghue has perfected an approach of pounding on podiums, bellowing louder than others, brushing aside foes as imbeciles or elitists and portraying himself in socially conscious San Francisco as pro-worker, pro-housing and pro-progress.

When O'Donoghue took over the Residential Builders Association, it had about 50 members who paid $25 apiece in annual dues. Today, about 600 members pay on a sliding scale by which the biggest contractors give $10,000 a year. The association's purpose has always been to get members' construction jobs through the bureaucracy.

In 1986, O'Donoghue said, "we were the black hat organization, the whipping boy for every wacko in this city. I decided enough is enough. We're going to organize and kick ass."

Even O'Donoghue's critics acknowledge the fierceness of his focus.

"Joe doesn't give a damn about anything else -- neighborhood character, compatibility with existing residential structures, the history of houses, housing affordability, nothing but work for the boys," said Stephen Williams, a lawyer who won a 1997 court fight against an O'Donoghue-backed proposed demolition of a Victorian on Sutter Street.

"I'm Irish, and Joe reminds me a lot of my relatives," Williams said. "You always know where he is coming from: Life is a big drama like some Eugene O'Neill play, and every fight is a fight to the death."

'MORE LOFTS, MORE LOFTS'

One August day last summer, with fanfare worthy of a Hollywood epic, O'Donoghue orchestrated an event where hundreds of construction workers jammed into a Board of Supervisors committee hearing on a loft moratorium.

After the measure died a very public death, O'Donoghue and his workers swept out of the board chambers and down the marble steps of City Hall rotunda. The workers' chant was: "More lofts, more lofts."

The live-work buildings being constructed in the city are the most visible product of O'Donoghue's muscle. More than 3,300 units have been approved and another 2,200 are awaiting the city's go-ahead. O'Donoghue estimates his members have built 80 percent of the lofts constructed.

"I am proud we addressed the niche in the market and helped rejuvenate the South of Market into an attractive area that had been a slum," O'Donoghue said. "It had been a place of defecation and drug dealing."

Critics decry live-work buildings as ugly, boxlike structures that have no open space or affordable units and provide about half the one-time development fees for schools that other residential dwellings do.

By allowing live-work loft projects to be built in areas where industrial businesses still exist, critics say, the city is abrogating its planning role and forcing small businesses to close or move elsewhere.

In a city known nationwide for its fights over issues such as freeways and highrises, however, opponents have been incapable of stopping lofts. The foes scoff at the idea that market forces alone have defeated them.

"With the Residential Builders Association contributions, they buy undue influence by instilling fear in officeholders who then never oppose their live-work units and Richmond specials (homes demolished and replaced by larger dwellings), which have turned parts of the city into a future ghetto," said Jake McGoldrick, a Richmond District teacher and housing activist who has fought O'Donoghue for years.

Money is indeed one of the tools used by O'Donoghue. A review of 1998-1999 contributions found a $50,000 Residential Builders donation to gubernatorial candidate Davis and a $50,000 personal contribution to Davis from O'Donoghue; $10,000 in Residential Builders money to the Democrats' Assembly Victory Fund; $40,000 to the Senate Democratic leadership; $5,000 to Burton, who is the state Senate president pro tem; and thousands more to committees that worked to help re-elect Brown. "Willie asked a bunch of us to help Gray if we could," O'Donoghue said. "We have gotten more interested in state politics because we are in trouble -- term limits is a disaster. You get experienced people tossed out of office, and this city will be the loser in that."

But money alone did not give O'Donoghue his power.

"Joe operates on three levels simultaneously -- people, pressure and money," housing activist Welch said. "He can mobilize large numbers of people to hearings, which never happened before with the pro-development forces; he hammers elected officials and makes contributions across class lines to groups like tenants.

"I believe in the big man theory of history," Welch said. "That's not to say someone else couldn't have come along and done this. But I have never seen anyone who saw and seized opportunities the way Joe did." 'Willie Needed Him'

At election time last year, the link between Brown and O'Donoghue was there for all to see. Throughout the city, dozens of Brown campaign placards were tacked up on Residential Builders Association building sites.

O'Donoghue was also on the move for Brown in the Catholic parishes, distributing pamphlets that attacked Brown's foe in the mayor's race, Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano, for leading the effort to allow the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to close Castro Street on Easter "to mock and vilify the Catholic community."

"Willie needed him. Joe was his West of Twin Peaks guy," said one City Hall elected official. "Joe got people to the headquarters and doing a lot of precinct work. He is a political base all to himself.

"A lot of the newly arrived Irish contractors don't know what they're doing when they first get here, and Joe is able to help them get their permits and find their way through the process. He's not just a leader. He's really a gatekeeper to Willie, the Planning Department and the Department of Building Inspection."

Beyond his gatekeeper role, O'Donoghue is also aligned with others close to Brown, including the mayor's top political consultant, Jack Davis, and Ted Fang, publisher of the San Francisco Independent and a member of the family seeking to buy the San Francisco Examiner. Both Davis and Fang were at the builders' dinner dance sitting at a table with Warren Hinckle, the Independent columnist who is one of O'Donoghue's close friends.

All O'Donoghue's ties to Brown are not lost on his opponents, who are angry for the way they see him using that relationship to help him push for live-work lofts.

Sue Hestor, a land use lawyer who has fought O'Donoghue, says, "I have never seen evidence that Joe has been told 'no' by the mayor on anything."

Brown declined to be interviewed by The Chronicle about his relationship with O'Donoghue. "The mayor's schedule did not permit time for an interview," said his spokeswoman, Kandace Bender.

In public, however, the mayor embraces his ally. At the builders' dinner, Brown acted in a skit about O'Donoghue that featured planning commissioners with names such as "Clueless," "Bitchy" and "Horny." Brown told the crowd he agreed with a skit character who pronounced O'Donoghue "a national treasure."

In case Brown should forget what O'Donoghue has done for him, O'Donoghue will remind him. In his speech at the dinner, O'Donoghue said his association "demonstrated our power last fall when the mayor was re-elected. ... We have put together the most effective political organization in the city, and we intend to keep it this way."

SOUP FROM A BAG OF BONES

When O'Donoghue is holding forth at a city hearing -- his fingers jabbing in the air and his voice reverberating with sarcasm for his enemies -- he often boasts of his background as an Irish immigrant.

Growing up, O'Donoghue lived with his family in public housing in Limerick. He said he and his three brothers and five sisters had holes in their shoes and wore hand-me-down clothes. He recalls his father bringing home a bag of bones to cook up for soup to feed the hungry family.

About the time O'Donoghue decided to come to the United States, there weren't many jobs in Limerick. One, he said, was for urine analyst at a hospital "and 400 students applied."

Still, he said, it was hard to go. A few years after he left, his mother, then in her 50s, died of tuberculosis. Recounting this part of his life, O'Donoghue stopped for a minute. Tears were in his eyes.

"No one likes to leave," he said. "Most never return home."

In the years that followed, he worked in a variety of jobs in Los Angeles, then came to San Francisco in 1963 and worked as a laborer, union organizer, tax preparer and housing remodeler before he took over the Residential Builders presidency in 1986.

Today he travels some and lives with his girlfriend of 20 years in a three-story house in the Western Addition. Most of his seven-day work week, however, is about pushing construction work for his members: When his foes stop to rest a moment, O'Donoghue is still driving ahead.

"To understand Joe, you have to understand where he came from," said Mikel O'Riordan, a Limerick native who is publisher of San Francisco's Irish Herald monthly newspaper. "It was a struggle to stay alive there. Joe came out of that, and it molded him, made him such a fierce competitor."

In the Irish community, "Joe O'Donoghue has a major positive effect," O'Riordan said. "He is incredibly generous, contributing to groups furthering Irish causes and to a lot of individuals on a very private basis. He has paid for the college education of several individuals. He is a fine person, but the public doesn't see this. The press consistently attacks him, and he is a pretty easy target to demonize because he is bucking the system, rattling the cages of the establishment."

Ken Harrington, an ex-deputy city attorney who is one of O'Donoghue's closest friends and the mayor's special assistant on economic development, said O'Donoghue is not driven by money. "He is probably one of the most unique guys I know. The contradictions," Harrington said. "He is probably the most generous man I know. He doesn't drink alcohol. ... He loves a fight. The Irish are that way. There's a saying, 'Their songs are sad and their fights are merry.'

"To me, the most satisfaction he gets out of life is doling out money to people who need it -- orthodontia for a kid in Ireland, help for a best friend's widow, a fire escape for a convent."

All that aside, Harrington said with a grin, "If you are on his enemies list, watch out."

Those who have battled O'Donoghue say he can be vicious, and some say, increasingly so as the years have passed.

"Joe was always flamboyant, but now he is belligerent and mean," said Dick Millet, ex-president of the Potrero Hill Boosters neighborhood group. "I think he got away with being belligerent in the past, so he's grown more and more so."

Michael Hamman, a contractor who fought the O'Donoghue-sponsored 1994 ballot measure that restructured the Building Inspection agency, said O'Donoghue "threatened me and offered to put a pair of concrete shoes on me and let me sleep with the fishes."

O'Donoghue denies saying that. Instead, he said Hamman made a crack at a meeting about "obscene profits" and he responded, "Fatso, just because we had the smarts to put our profits back in our industry, you are putting your profits back into your body."

Jim WalkingBear, a paraplegic who uses a wheelchair, said that several years ago he angered O'Donoghue by telling a San Francisco restaurant owner who was an acquaintance of O'Donoghue's about what he called minor disabled-access problems at her establishment.

"O'Donoghue left messages for four days straight on my phone, threatening me," said WalkingBear, who does volunteer work on disability access in a state-affiliated outreach program. "O'Donoghue said he'd send a couple of the boys down to take care of me and after they'd beat on my head a bit, I'd straighten out. It frightened me quite a bit."

O'Donoghue expressed outrage at WalkingBear's comments, saying, "I have never threatened anyone in my life like that ever, and especially someone disabled." He said he had talked with WalkingBear once on the phone asking him to elaborate about the restaurant's access issues. He also said he would take a lie detector test to back up his version of events.

"He called me and said, 'I understand you are making calls about my friend Randy Shaw, and I want to tell you if you don't stop immediately, me and some of my friends will take you into a gutter and bash your head in with a shovel,"' Gillespie said.

O'Donoghue denied making the threat, saying he only told Gillespie that he had gone too far in his attack on Shaw.

Two years ago, O'Donoghue became angry with labor leader Stan Smith and left a phone message saying he hoped Smith would "bust a kidney" or have a heart attack. O'Donoghue said his call was prompted by Smith's opposition to a ballot measure to remodel Laguna Honda. Smith denies he opposed fixing up the city's convalescent hospital.

O'Donoghue says his association backed the measure because he was concerned about good care for the elderly, and noted the Residential Builders got none of the jobs on the all-union project. He also defended his attack on Smith, saying, "I don't give a crap whether it hurt me or not. There's nothing wrong with expressing the way you feel."

A WAY WITH VOTERS

Central to O'Donoghue's rise to power has been his understanding of how to use the ballot box to his advantage, framing an issue in a way that makes whatever he seeks appear desirable.

In 1992, he put a measure on the ballot rezoning land across from Kaiser Permanente Medical Center on Geary Boulevard, successfully selling the proposal to voters as pro-health care. O'Donoghue and some friends owned buildings on the land, and he walked away with millions from the subsequent sale to Kaiser. Kaiser, which had run into neighborhood opposition for years over its expansion efforts, eventually built an eight-story medical building at the site.

Indrajit Obeysekere, senior counsel for Kaiser Permanente, said O'Donoghue skillfully represented himself and the 16 other landowners in the negotiations. "He's the only one who could get a building of that size approved by the voters," said Obeysekere, who has seen O'Donoghue socially on occasion since the negotiations. "He is really a genius when it comes to figuring out people, systems and structures.

"Joe has this reputation of being a tough guy and a bully, but I found him to be likable and interesting," Obeysekere said. "It took us months to end up with a price, but he was always fair and a man of his word."

Neither he nor O'Donoghue would say how many millions Kaiser paid O'Donoghue in the deal. "I was independently wealthy before the Kaiser deal -- from rents from property," said O'Donoghue, who adds that he doesn't get a salary as the Residential Builders president and has never profited from loft construction. "Kaiser added another niche, but to be honest, I have made far more on the stock market."

Two years later, in 1994, O'Donoghue set the stage for obtaining the level of power he has today.

In what struck many observers as an odd alliance, he teamed with Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic to write Proposition G, which the two said was needed to reform the city's bureaucracy-bloated Bureau of Building Inspection. O'Donoghue said he wanted speedier permit approvals and more public input through a newly created commission.

Shaw, a lawyer whose clients are mostly low-income tenants living in residential hotels, said he wanted a system that improved the caliber of hotel inspections. Together Shaw's clinic and O'Donoghue's association contributed more than $58,000 to underwrite the signature collecting and campaign for the measure. Critics accuse Shaw of making a self-serving pact with O'Donoghue, allowing O'Donoghue to dictate calls on building inspections while Shaw won great control over which residential hotels get inspected.

Shaw defends O'Donoghue as an admirable figure and dismisses criticism of his own role in the department as absurd. "These are wild, untrue charges," Shaw said. "I think there is no question we now have the best housing code enforcement of any major city in America."

The arguments mustered by O'Donoghue and Shaw to win Proposition G's passage were hard to combat. There were few advocates for the existing Bureau of Building Inspection, where some inspectors had been disciplined and others had been fired for misconduct.

Many in San Francisco's liberal political establishment lined up behind Proposition G. But some well-known individuals and groups also fought the measure. Rudy Nothenberg, the city's chief administrative officer, said at the time that it was "a blatant power grab by certain special interest groups who want to convince you that they are interested in public service."

Today, five years after Proposition G became law, O'Donoghue's influence over the Building Inspection Department and its commission is enormous.

In the personnel area, sources within the department say, staff members regularly advance or are marginalized in backwater areas depending on how they fare with O'Donoghue.

Donna Levitt, a former carpenters' union organizer, says that last year she approached Deputy Director Jim Hutchinson, a longtime O'Donoghue ally, about being hired as an inspector.

"I told him I wasn't on the best terms with Joe," Levitt said. "He said he couldn't imagine doing the job without Joe's support and I would need it." Levitt said Hutchinson assured her she was qualified for the job, but she was never called for an interview.

Hutchinson denies saying that about O'Donoghue. "She could have talked to God and wouldn't have gotten the job because she didn't have the experience," he said.

Other accounts of O'Donoghue's role in staff matters are not hard to come by.

Sources say Sean McNulty, one of the department's first deputy directors under the Proposition G reorganization, ran afoul of O'Donoghue and was pushed out of his position after about a year because he wouldn't always comply with O'Donoghue's wishes. Hutchinson then got that post.

"Sean is very ethical. He wouldn't do what Joe wants -- lightening up on code enforcement, not looking too closely, signing off on the Residential Builders Association permits," said one department source who, like all nonmanagement department staff interviewed, asked not to be identified for fear of retribution by O'Donoghue or his allies.

Hutchinson said he won his post on the merits.

Then there was Todd Jackson, who was one of about half a dozen senior building inspectors in the department. One department source said Jackson ran into trouble in 1998, when he testified at a department hearing that what had been billed as a remodel of a Funston Avenue home in the Sunset District was actually an illegal demolition.

"Joe really got in his face about it," the department source said. A few days later, "Todd was transferred to the disabled access division. Joe wanted him out of decision making and wanted to convey a message to other department staff who might think of opposing his agenda."

Another staff member, senior building inspector Rafael Torres-Gil, is facing a proposed 10-day suspension. The department says Torres-Gil botched his work on a controversial Bayview project and issued citations, inaccurately concluding that four unpermitted units existed at the site.

Before the suspension was handed down, O'Donoghue lambasted Torres-Gil's handling of the project during a meeting of the Building Inspection Commission. "When Joe gets up and barks, as he did this time, the department and Brown commissioners jump into action," said one department source close to the case. "When I learned of the suspension, I just saw Joe's fingerprints all over it."

Before the department moved to suspend Torres-Gil, he also wrote reports and conducted investigations that implicated O'Donoghue's friend Hutchinson in some questionable procedures. Hutchinson has denied any wrongdoing, but that hasn't stopped the department controversy swirling around Torres-Gil. O'Donoghue denied intervening in personnel matters or staff conflicts, saying he is too busy. "I stay out of that stuff. That is one of my reasons for my ability to bring people together."

Torres-Gil, McNulty and Jackson wouldn't talk about what happened to them, and department Director Frank Chiu insisted O'Donoghue did not influence their cases. He said critics who complain of favoritism toward some developers are wrong. "At no time would the commission or the department not enforce the building code," Chiu said.

It was during the controversy over Torres-Gil that O'Donoghue got help from close ally Warren Hinckle, a longtime San Francisco journalist who enjoys eviscerating his targets in his column for the Independent.

Hinckle gleefully weighed in on the Torres-Gil fray, describing his target as "the first known cowboy building inspector." Hinckle wrote that Torres-Gil had become "the wealthy, if controversial, owner of a good many San Francisco buildings" while working as a building inspector. Allegations against Torres-Gil of improper real estate dealings were investigated several years ago by the city attorney's office, which cleared him of wrongdoing.

O'Donoghue watchers say his alliance with Hinckle gives O'Donoghue yet another of his bases of power, the ability to lash out in print at anyone standing in his way.

The alliance is more than philosophical. O'Donoghue says he pays Hinckle about $10,000 during election years for ads in the Argonaut, a tabloid that Hinckle puts out from time to time. In addition, O'Donoghue says he gave Hinckle free rent for his Argonaut office for five to seven years in the 1990s.

But O'Donoghue says he doesn't tell Hinckle what to write. For his part, Hinckle emphatically denies that either the advertising money or free rent he received from O'Donoghue for the Argonaut office influences his work.

He said he and O'Donoghue agree on a lot of issues, such as their contempt for the no-growth movement. To argue he is just parroting O'Donoghue, he said, would be like saying Walter Lippmann "wrote his columns on the New Deal for Roosevelt. Not that I am Lippmann or Joe is Roosevelt. I just happen to be on the side of where Joe is a lot."

Critics don't buy it.

"Warren gives Joe the absolute and complete ability to pick and choose targets," Welch said. "His columns in the Independent are often associated with retribution moves by Joe, and sometimes that backing of Joe extends to the paper's news pages and editorials as well."

Smith, the construction trades labor leader who has battled with O'Donoghue, says that with O'Donoghue positioned as he is, he "has been able to get away with being the city bully. In Building Inspection he has so much political influence that he can do as he sees fit, and no one dares say anything against him for fear of jeopardizing their jobs."

As far as O'Donoghue is concerned, there is no problem with the influence he wields in the agency. "We have a say, an influence. Why wouldn't we? We created that department," he said.

Friends in High Places

Outside the construction world, few noticed when Brown and his rival in last year's mayoral race, Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano, made appointments some months ago to the Building Inspection Commission.

But something of major import had happened: Brown's appointments had the effect of giving O'Donoghue a continued friendly majority of the commission that can halt any project in the city if it finds code violations.

One of the moves Brown made was to replace Sigmund Freeman with Rodrigo Santos, a member of the Residential Builders Association.

"It was very sudden," Freeman said of his removal, adding that O'Donoghue had called him at least twice at home while he was on the panel and said he "was not happy with my conduct on the commission." O'Donoghue said he called only once to speak in behalf of a builder's project.

After Freeman lost his post, he said, Brown wrote him a letter "saying he wanted to revitalize the commission with new ideas, ... but his other commission appointees had all been there longer than I had. I would have preferred a more honest explanation that there was political pressure to remove me."

Santos acknowledges he has worked on many jobs for Residential Builders Association clients but stresses that he is an independent vote.

Mona Cereghino, a former building commissioner who was replaced by Ammiano early this year, said three current Brown appointees with whom she served repeatedly sided with O'Donoghue. Last year when the seven-member commission was electing its chair, Cereghino said, those Brown commissioners, Alfonso Fillon, Bobbie Sue Hood and Roy Guinnane, first "took a break and met in the hall with Joe. It wasn't hidden at all, and then they came back in and voted bam, bam, bam for Fillon."

Ammiano's appointees have sparred with O'Donoghue at hearings. Esther Marks, who served as treasurer of Ammiano's campaign, said, "I want to work to help build a department where there are no repercussions if they tell a member of the Residential Builders Association or other influential contractors to correct some problem on a project."

Debra Walker, an artist who fought O'Donoghue on live-work projects, said: "I have heard from people it often takes months to get permits, and on the other hand some others seem to just slide through without proper review on projects that require it. There seems to be favoritism, and that doesn't serve the public or the developers."

Hood, an architect appointed first by Mayor Frank Jordan and later by Brown, said Walker and Marks seem intent on "continuing their pro-Ammiano campaign and see us, probably inaccurately, as Mayor Brown's presence in the department." She said that although she has had Residential Builders clients, "No one has been trying to tell me what to do."

Guinnane, a builder who is a close ally of O'Donoghue's, dismissed Marks and Walker as plotters who tried without success to seize control of the Building Inspection Commission.

Fillon did not return calls for comment.

O'Donoghue makes no effort to disguise his contempt for the Ammiano appointees. Walker, he said, doesn't know how to read the building code.

He calls Marks culturally insensitive, noting that she voted against an Irish dance studio's bid for a permit when she was on the Board of Appeals. During one recent Building Inspection Commission meeting, O'Donoghue said he knew Marks had a tendency to behave as "Madame Empress."

Marks, who is of Japanese heritage, said that after the meeting ended, O'Donoghue whispered to her: "You come from an imperial dynasty. I'm an Irishman, and I'm going to roll over you."

O'Donoghue's version is that he told her: "You come from a culture that has trampled over the rights of other cultures, and I'll be goddamned if you'll trample over the rights of the Irish culture."

As for his role in the appointment of building inspection commissioners, O'Donoghue said Ammiano's pick of Marks and Walker politicized the commission and he had to step in and talk to Brown about the situation. "As the leader of the construction industry in this city, we had the obligation" to make sure the commission was well-balanced, he said.

O'Donoghue's molding of the political process isn't limited to the Department of Building Inspection. Many of his victories are before the Planning Commission, which rules on major developments, zoning issues and applications seeking exceptions to the planning code.

Millet, the ex-president of the Potrero Hill Boosters, estimates he has gone up against 20 Residential Builders Association live-work projects before the commission and lost consistently.

"We haven't stopped a single one," he said. "When I see an RBA project, I know they'll get what they want. They think they are entitled to build out of character and out of scale for a neighborhood."

Word of O'Donoghue's power spreads quickly among neighbors who try to stop or downsize an association project.

Neighbors who wanted to preserve open space next to a 27-unit apartment complex at Stanyan and Fell streets last year said they figured they would get nowhere because O'Donoghue was on the other side.

"Even though we put on a good presentation before the Planning Commission, you could tell from the air in the room we weren't making any impact," said Lorraine Bader, president of the Stanyan-Fulton Neighborhood Association. "We could tell the Planning Commission was going to rubber-stamp what O'Donoghue wanted, and it did."

Commission President Anita Theoharis described the project at Stanyan and Fell as a fine development. Theoharis, who got to know O'Donoghue when he supported her in a planning fight in her Westwood Park neighborhood, said that although she is personally fond of O'Donoghue, that does not affect her votes. She said she typically votes for lofts and that her decisions are based on merit.

In a letter written for the Residential Builders' annual dinner, Theoharis elaborated on her view of O'Donoghue, saying he has helped make the city "better with his vision, commitment, energy, passion and generosity. Just ask the builders who have prospered and are a political force today because of his organizing."

Only rarely is O'Donoghue beaten in a construction fight. One such time involved a Victorian on Sutter Street in an area undergoing gentrification just north of Kaiser Hospital.

Attorney Williams lost in city hearings in his bid to block an O'Donoghue-backed attempt to demolish the Victorian next door to his home. The contractor O'Donoghue supported wanted to build a three-unit condo that would have risen 20 feet above Williams' house, eliminating much of the light in his back yard, Williams said.

O'Donoghue, explaining his position, said at the time: "We have an increasing population. We have a demand for housing. That is the reality."

In 1997, Williams filed suit over the project, arguing that the city was violating its own planning guidelines requiring construction to be compatible with existing structures in a neighborhood. He won in court.

"The Residential Builders Association members make heavy contributions," Williams said. "In return, the mayor makes appointments to boards and commissions that are favorable to their views. These appointees are not neutral hearing officers who would apply the law fairly and evenly in all cases, including my own, where we had to get a court order to have city guidelines applied to save a 105-year-old Victorian."

'To the Victor the Spoils'

To this day, many San Franciscans have never heard of O'Donoghue. But in 15 years, he has moved from the political fringe to the center of action through what he calls "outreach," the building of one alliance after another.

Early on, O'Donoghue made connections in the growing Asian American community. It was "a sleeping giant," he said, "and once it awoke, you could see what was on the horizon." He said he impressed upon his members that "women have a place in our organization, minorities have a place in our organization. We're in America, we're not in the old country."

He ran advertisements advancing Residential Builders positions in the neighborhood newspapers. And he never missed a chance to make an ally, stepping up to the microphone at building hearings to say he didn't know the people involved but from their testimony, he knew their case was good.

Now, as district elections loom in San Francisco, O'Donoghue promises he will take on some of the candidates. Last year, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown welcomed O'Donoghue's members over to his city to build. To date, O'Donoghue says, about 1,500 live-work lofts have been approved there.

O'Donoghue is also dabbling on the national level. At a Davis fund-raiser, Willie Brown put O'Donoghue next to President Clinton, giving the Residential Builders leader what he said was a chance to congratulate "the person who, more than any Irish American, more than any Irish politician, made possible the peace agreement in Northern Ireland."

"You can bet your sweet life we'll contribute to Hillary's campaign" in the New York Senate race, O'Donoghue said.

And then came the crowning moment for O'Donoghue that recent Saturday night in the St. Francis Grand Ballroom, with the mayor at his side and the hundreds of faces looking up at him on the stage. "With this type of fulfillment, I could kick the bucket tomorrow and have no regrets," a beaming O'Donoghue told the crowd.

O'Donoghue's admirers have no doubt that he has improved the city.

Ken Cleaveland, governmental affairs director for the Building Owners and Managers Association, which represents commercial properties, says O'Donoghue has contributed to the planning debate by "talking about the need to develop housing in the city. He has definitely had the single greatest impact on residential development in the private sector in the last decade. He has an objective, and it is to keep his Irish builders working constantly. Everything else is a distant second."

As for O'Donoghue's power in the department created by his ballot proposition, Cleaveland said: "Because Joe pushed this measure, he says, 'To the victor the spoils.' That's the way Joe is."

But many who fight O'Donoghue see his rise to power in a dark way and shake their heads at the Board of Supervisors' recent vote declaring a "Joe O'Donoghue Day."

"Left to their own devices, Joe and others of his ilk will relentlessly pursue projects that maximize their return," said Hamman, the contractor who has battled O'Donoghue. "Unless you have a gatekeeper who can step in and ask, 'Is this in the best interest of the city overall?' you are going to have development run amok. And that's pretty much what we have now."

MICHAEL JOSEPH O'DONOGHUE

Born Aug. 12, 1937, in Limerick, Ireland, where he grew up in a family of nine children. As a child, he was educated by the Christian Brothers. His father worked odd jobs; O'Donoghue says his mother was "a musician, very gentle, creative."

-- Moved to the United States at 19, working in a bank in Los Angeles, then as an accountant for General Motors. Came to San Francisco in 1963 and held a variety of jobs, including organizer for the Service Employees International Union.

-- Became president of the Residential Builders Association in 1986. The predominantly Irish group was set up to help builders get their permits through city bureaucracy.

-- Married briefly in the late 1970s; now lives with his girlfriend in a three-story home in the Western Addition. Has become a wealthy man, he says, through property holdings, rentals and the stock market.

SAN FRANCISCO'S LIVE-WORK LOFTS BACKGROUND:

The Board of Supervisors and the S.F. Planning Commission, lobbied by artists concerned about their dwindling ability to afford to live in the city, adopted changes in the planning code in 1988 permitting live-work construction. Though sponsors were focusing on preserving artists' housing, builders seized on the measure as a means to build loft units that anyone could buy or rent.

-- DEFINITION: Live-work units typically consist of one large room, almost always with a loft and a separate bathroom.

-- WHERE: Most live-work units are in manufacturing-zoned districts in the South of Market, Potrero and north Mission, where residential housing had been limited before live-work construction was allowed.

-- PRICE: Lofts typically market anywhere from $300,000 to $1 million, with many selling for about $500,000.

-- BUILDER REQUIREMENTS: Unlike other residential housing developers, builders of live-work units do not have to set aside a portion of their property for affordable housing and open space or meet most disabled access requirements. Live-work developers also pay about half what other residential builders pay in one-time fees for schools.

-- HOW MANY: To date, 1,918 units have been built -- 1,165 of them since Willie Brown became mayor in 1996. Another 1,400 have been approved but are not yet completed, and applications for more than 2,200 are pending.

-- STATUS: Interim zoning controls -- in place until permanent regulations are adopted by the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors -- make some loft projects subject to discretionary review by the Planning Commission.

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